Dirty Projectors Come Clean: There IS a New Album, Due in February

They shared the 7-plus minute track, "Up in Hudson."

After the release of two tracks — “Keep Your Name” and “Little Bubble” — Dirty Projectors have announced a new album. It comes out on February 24 via Domino, and, interestingly, it’s a self-titled album.

That’s “interesting” due to the nature of what we’ve heard of the album thus far — that it’s a breakup album, seemingly, as rumored, about the split between Longstreth and former collaborator Amber Coffman. The latter released a debut track titled “All to Myself” after Dirty Projectors came out with “Keep Your Name,” a title whose subject of nominal possession seems to bear all the more weight now that Longstreth appears to be reaffirming said possession by making this the first Dirty Projectors album that’s just the band name.

Dirty Projectors have also shared yet another track (this one comes sans video), “Up in Hudson,” a 7-plus minute track whose length makes sense, given that it’s pretty much the (one-sided) oral history of an entire relationship. “The first time ever I saw your face/laid my eyes on you/was the Bowery Ballroom stage…” If it wasn’t apparent from that lyric, the song seems to make further lyrical reference to “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” written by Ewan MacColl and most famously sung by Roberta Flack. For it then moves on to describe the “first time ever [Longstreth] kissed [this person’s] mouth.” And if you had doubts about who this song is for, the lyric about writing “Stillness Is the Move” for this person should clarify that. The song is a rapid march through old memories, with horns interjecting and muddling and twisting around them, leading up to the conclusive chorus “Cause love will burn out/And love will just fade away.”